


the lam

by touchtheskye



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Tumblr Prompt, thejcexchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 16:18:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9243725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchtheskye/pseuds/touchtheskye
Summary: She lived like this for years, long before she met him.(Written for tentaclabia as part of the Johnson & Coulson Exchange. Happy Holidays! Prompt: “Phil and Daisy run away together. They also fight crime together, much to the dismay of new SHIELD. THAT’S NOT ALL THEY DO TOGETHER THOUGH, or maybe that’s what they both eventually want to believe will happen.”)





	

They didn’t run away together.

She left SHIELD, and it happened at the same time that he left SHIELD, so everyone assumed that it was a them together thing.

She’s not sure how she feels about it, the fact that in their minds she and Coulson are linked somehow. Attached to each other.

She doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to be a burden or a curse to anybody ever again. Especially not him. She’s tried so hard to keep him at arm’s length, tried to keep him from getting caught up in whatever it is about her that ruins things.

But on some level she knows she likes it, feeling that sense of belonging with a person, no matter how hard she swims against the tide.

She was so angry at first, when she checked into the run-down motel and saw a message waiting for Pablo Jimenez by the phone. The name stood out on the notepad like it was lit up in neon. Never mind that it was upside down, in cramped handwriting and cheap ink.

Why she decided to confront him, to immediately go to his room and insist that he not follow her, is a mystery. Agent Johnson would have left quietly, found another place to stay. Inhuman Fugitive Quake would have been long gone, out the door and on the road in an instant. 

But Daisy – Daisy finds his door and unlocks it with a little trick she picked up when she was twelve. Daisy lets herself in.

When it turns out he’s not following her, that he’s running too, well. That changes things.

 

 

After a while, Daisy wonders if the lifestyle is getting to Coulson.

She lived like this for years, long before she met him. On the run, no resources. Solitary. She can handle it. Sometimes she even enjoys it.

She likes it even better, strangely enough, having him there.

In the beginning she thought it would be terrible, having to worry about a second person all the time. She was concerned that she wouldn't be as focused or as mobile as she wanted to be, wouldn’t always be able to make the tough calls with someone looking over her shoulder.

And if she’s honest with herself, she isn’t as focused or as mobile, not really. She can’t take the same risks as she could before.

But it also means that she isn’t pushing it like she was before, living off SHIELD-issue bone regrowth pills and the occasional contact with Elena.

She eats, she sleeps, she keeps a comparatively regular schedule. 

It makes a difference. She knows she’s actually doing more to help people this way, even if it feels like she’s taking it easy. She’s on her game, alert. Her powers aren’t maxed out at the end of every encounter.

When something comes up in the middle of the night, she weighs the decision. If it can wait until morning, it waits, and if it can’t, she wakes Coulson too.

There are definitely benefits to having another person there, the little things you don’t consider when you’re by yourself. 

Then there are the obvious perks that come with Coulson specifically. He makes amazing coffee. He shares her taste for sweet things, a weakness she had never fully appreciated until they started eating nearly every meal together. 

He listens to her, always. He’s unobtrusive.

He’s more than unobtrusive, come to think of it. Coulson never complains about anything, not really, so maybe her concern is for nothing. She’s halfway convinced that he likes this – she can see it, and she wonders if he sees it too, how alike they are.

But she can’t shake the feeling. Is it too much for him? Is she being selfish, not telling him to leave?

 

 

They fight crime together, which is probably contributing to the whole “everyone thinks we ran away together” concept, but whatever. She’s loving the work.

It feels right. Helping people, protecting them, seriously making a difference, without worrying about the paperwork. They’re not held back by optics and press and everything else that SHIELD is too wrapped up in to be an effective organization.

That’s one of the other perks, actually, watching Mace chase his own tail on the news. He has to act like everything’s under control, of course he does, but the strain is becoming more and more apparent in every interview.

It becomes a little ritual between them. Coulson will pull out two glasses and they will sit down with the evening news to play the Jeffrey Mace Drinking Game. 

Every time he calls someone by their first name to create a false sense of comfort and familiarity, drink. 

Every time his eyebrow twitches, presumably from trying to keep a straight face while one of his advisors screams at him over the comms, drink. 

Every time he refers to Agent Johnson as if A) She’s still around and B) They’re the Best Inhuman Pals Ever, drink.

“Poor Jeff,” she muses, shaking her head. “Better him than either of us. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah, I can.” Coulson’s voice sounds funny, but maybe it’s the bourbon. She glances over and he’s watching her intently, his gaze level and eyes soft.

So maybe not the bourbon.

“What?”

“I can imagine it, sure. You being Director.”

She doesn’t know what to do with the sincerity in his face – _why does he have to be so open and sincere with her all the time, it’s just awful_ – so she smiles in what she hopes is a bemused, detached kind of way and refills Coulson’s glass.

 

 

She’s thought about it more than once. It’s only natural after you spend enough time with a person, right?

Especially a person like Coulson, come on, is she supposed to be immune to that jawline of his? To his handsomeness, to the boyish way he gets because he knows he’s handsome? To his eyes, to that flirty, irresistible thing he does with his lips sometimes, whatever the hell that’s about, how could she not notice?

If anything it’s shocking that her vivid sexual fantasies about Coulson didn’t start sooner, right?

Does Coulson ever think along the same lines, that’s the real question, and she’s pretty sure the answer is a definitive no. It’s not that she doesn’t think of herself as desirable, it has nothing to do with that, it’s more that _he’s Coulson, how could he?_

But there’s no harm thinking about it, wondering what it would be like. How he would kiss her, how he would hold her, how solid and warm he would feel under her hands. How he would smell, how she would be surrounded by his scent. In his room, in his bed, in his arms. 

In the shower. Even though shower sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, she knows this, she thinks about Coulson in the shower all the time, wet and hot and steamy, touching skin slick with soap.

Masturbation can be a tricky business on the run, but she’s always been really quiet, so. 

He’s a strange subject, her fantasy version of Coulson. He’s never Phil, always Coulson, for starters. He acts basically like Coulson, he’s dressed basically like Coulson, but he touches her desperately, like he’s wanted her his whole life.

She comes breathing his name in a silent exhale, shaking and sweating, collapsing back into a pillow and a bed that aren’t hers.

 

 

Eventually she starts to realize that her hopeless crush on Coulson (and it is hopeless, it has to be) runs a little deeper than she thought.

There’s that time she sees him sitting on the steps of a porch, shoulder to shoulder with a kid, an Inhuman girl, and he says something that makes the girl laugh in that watery way people do when the tears are starting to let up. And suddenly Daisy can barely breathe, she has to be anywhere else but there, watching Phil Coulson repair a little piece of a girl’s heart.

Then there are all the times he knows exactly the right thing to say, what she needs to hear, or when she needs to talk and he just needs to listen.

There are the times neither of them say anything at all, he just pulls her against his shoulder and lets her rest on him, sits beside her on a moth-eaten couch and watches a lame movie while rubbing small circles on her back.

 

 

In retrospect she should have seen it coming, but Daisy’s still pretty shocked when Phil Coulson kisses her for the first time.

She’s so deep in denial that it becomes a very surreal moment. Even as Coulson’s eyelashes flutter closed and she feels the heat of his breath on her face, she’s not entirely sure what’s happening. 

It’s not until his lips brush hers that she acknowledges it for what it is – Coulson is kissing her. Coulson. A kiss, initiated by Coulson. It’s a revelation for some reason, that he wants to kiss her, that he wants to kiss her enough to actually do it.

He’s tentative, his hands resting lightly over her tac suit, like he’s unsure of his welcome, and it’s at that moment Daisy realizes she isn’t kissing him back, which is probably sending the wrong message.

She overcorrects, kissing him back with such ferocity that he stumbles, but she’s beyond caring. She is relentless, opening his mouth under hers and chasing his tongue, relishing the desperate sound he makes as her fingernails scrape over the nape of his neck.

When she finally breaks the kiss, breathless and flushed, Coulson is looking at her with that awful sincerity again and she can’t believe she didn’t notice sooner.

Phil Coulson is in love with her.

_“Daisy.”_

Now that she knows he can sound like that, her name little more than a broken plea on his lips, well. That changes things.


End file.
